The Bullish Case for Moni, human-centered design in crypto

Hi, my name is Artem, and I am the Chief Design Officer at Moni (crypto portfolio tracker). I’m writing this post to share my thoughts and observations about our product design, principles, and basics that serve as the foundation of our vision, and talk about design in general when it comes to the cryptocurrency industry.

The Problem.
As our co-founder, GG, pointed out in his short essay: “Actually, there are a lot of problems in UX / UI of products in the crypto industry. This happens due to the fact that market participants — technologists and financiers make products based on their prejudices, in other words, they make them for themselves”. Indeed, most of the products created in this field nowadays are not user-oriented. In fact, a similar situation could be observed in the days of the first desktop computers, when users couldn’t benefit from a friendly interface and had to interact with the system through the command line. However, over time, designers started to develop principles of human-computer interaction, which allowed PCs to become mainstream.

I believe that as cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology gain mass adoption, we are now at the frontier of the revolution in the context of building products, and gaining users’ trust and attention takes a fundamental approach to building convenient interaction tools. Today more and more businesses and service providers claim to be “simpler” and “more convenient” than their competitors, but such “simplicity” is often an illusion. Complex systems do not magically become simple by providing a simple user interface.

Simplicity can be achieved by making things more clear for the end-user; nevertheless, it is a complex, challenging, and time-consuming task. Any work in this area begins with research, information gathering, and analysis. Sometimes this process can take months or even years.

The popularity of the “How to buy bitcoin” query serves as perfect proof of how early we still are. New users, being in an expanding information field, are ready to make the first steps, but they run into multiple barriers and are forced to take numerous detours. Moreover, the issue of trust in the field of finance becomes even more obvious. People, for example, trust banks by default because the state generally backs these institutions, and all one needs to do to open a bank account is come to any branch or can even do it online from the comfort of their couch via the Internet. In the case of cryptocurrencies, the users face a complex task of conducting their own research: CEX or DEX, desktop, mobile, or cold wallet, etc.; add numerous concepts and terms and a variety of disciplines at the base of crypto (math, economics, physics, geopolitics and much more), and you will end up with an incredibly steep learning curve. Many will claim that this is the point of cryptocurrencies: making your own decisions and taking responsibility. While this is partially true, scaling and lowering the entry threshold for new users requires providing convenient tools capable of making onboarding as simple and intuitive as possible.

Our Vision.
We put a lot of time and effort into our product at the conceptualization phase. It’s not the UI that’s of utmost importance to us; it’s the idea itself. It’s as if you were designing a building, and instead of concentrating on its looks, you would focus on what its residents’ experience would be like.

Whenever I’m building a product, I inherently focus on the following method of design thinking: if you build a product — any product at all — put yourself in the shoes of its end-user, become its end-user. Therefore, it’s essential to be aware of the product you are building, gain complete control over it, and eliminate the noise.

Our product doesn’t simply strive to be different; we aim at being better than the rest, we have an urge to bring value to the end-user. But who is our end-user? A professional trader? A crypto-enthusiast or a grandmom who got excited about a cute little Doge? This is one of the essential and fundamental questions that ultimately does not have a single correct answer.

Many crypto projects’ interfaces are overwhelmed with functions that intrusively appear in front of a user in situations where he doesn’t necessarily need them. Some products are positioning themselves as simple-to-use and intuitive for everyone, but in fact, they seem to be designed with a professional trader in mind. We adhere to one of the immutable rules, formulated by ancient architects and engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio and transformed by thinkers of the great Bauhaus art school — “form always follows function”.

When we design a portfolio tracker, we bear in mind that the user often looks beyond the assets he holds but also browses through the other traders’ portfolios (for various reasons). This observation has led us to a conclusion that the portfolio screen should be conveniently divided into their own portfolio tab and other traders’ portfolios of their choice and that the process of adding new portfolios must be as fast and simple as possible.

In general, design thinking is capable of leading you to unexpected discoveries and solutions. So, while thinking over the process of following other traders’ portfolios, I caught myself thinking that I lacked an indicator that allows you to quickly assess the trader’s level of expertise; in other words, effectively decide if they are worth following. Thus, one of our analytics features — Trading Score — was born (you will get a chance to learn more about it later; to be among the first to get your hands on a release, join our waiting list here: getmoni.io).

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In this article, I’ve attempted to share current problems and the ways we solve them at Moni. Much more articles are coming your way; please like and share. Oh, and subscribe to my Instagram or Twitter, where I talk about design, interfaces, and products ❤️